My iPhone’s touchscreen has been acting up for the past month and a half. Intermittently throughout the day, the touchscreen would be unresponsive whenever I turned on the device. If this happened when a phone call came in, I would not be able to swipe the screen to answer. Finally on Tuesday, I set up an appointment to meet with a Genius at the Valley Fair Apple Store.
The Apple Store opens at 10:00 am, but there were several people talking with Geniuses when I arrived today at 9:40. I waited patiently as the minutes ticked by, watching the big-screen monitors go through various Tiger features — iChat, iPod, Spotlight, and repeat. Apparently, these video clips haven’t been updated for Leopard. At 10:00, my name was called, and I explained the problem to the Genius. I was able to duplicate the problem to him, after which he submitted a service request and handed me a new iPhone (new or refurbished — how can you tell? in a white box, meaning it was probably refurbished). Within fifteen minutes, I was out of the Apple Store and back at home. That’s pretty good service!
The “new” iPhone still had the 1.1.2 OS on it, so, I needed to upgrade the device to 1.1.3 before I could perform a Restore operation on it. Now, my iPhone is back to normal! Six months to go on the warranty; let’s hope no more problems creep up with the device!
tow.com 
I was wondering how easy it is to backup your saved contacts, music, calendar, settings with a new unit. Is there any way to proactively backup this data just in case I need to replace my iPhone like you did?
Syncing your iPhone to your computer should do the trick. Then, when you click Restore in iTunes, you select the phone you want to back up. Do make sure that you create backups of your Address Book and iCal calendars. When I restored my iPhone, all of my calendar entries were gone. Fortunately, I had a .Mac backup of iCal that I was able to restore from.
I had a similar experience, except my iPhone completely died (turned it on… screen went white for 5 seconds and then the battery became extremely hot for 30 minutes). I was in and out of the Palo Alto Apple Store in 20 minutes – and the “Apple Genius” gave me a knowing look when I mentioned the white screen and immediately fetched a replacement. Apple does replace these with refurbs, unfortunately, but they do have new casing over the refurbished parts. Apple is doing a great job caring for iPhone users.
Yes, Apple does offer pretty good customer service. I have had to have 3(!) iPhones replaced. I bought the 4GB model and have nothing but problems with it. On the flip side Apple has been quick to give me a replacement. However, what an inconvenience to have to keep going back to the store and waiting in their ridiculous Genius Bar appointments.
I have been an Apple customer faithfully since about 1992. I love their products and have owned about 7 iPods, 10 computers, and countless revisions of their software, AirPorts, peripherals, etc. But the iPhone is the worst product of theirs I have ever owned. In my opinion it’s a dud. I won’t go into the details of all the features it lacks and the other problems they have since we all pretty much know them.
I hope you don’t have anymore problems either and especially after the warranty. I fully expect that I will and if it’s past the warranty period I’ve decided I won’t buy a replacement iPhone. And 29 June 2009 I am canceling my AT&T contract and moving on; if not sooner and just eat it on the cancelation fee. (Don’t know if it’s AT&T or the design of the phone — antennae on the bottom — but my phone is horrible for making and receiving calls).
Sorry for the rant. My two cents. I just hope you don’t have as many problems as I’ve had.
Good luck!